The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 327
675 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
legal and social persecution of Mormons indirectly aided the defendants. In ad-
dition, he explains how racial prejudice led the all-Anglo jury to discount much
of the vital trial testimony provided by African American soldiers. Bitter and of-
ten vocal political tensions among the lawyers, judges, and justice officials also
hindered prosecution efforts.
But according to Ball, the not-guilty verdict was most heavily influenced by
Arizona's subordinate territorial status. Because the robbery involved a federal
payroll, U.S. justice officials (not the popularly elected territorial justice offi-
cials) were charged with prosecuting the case. Throughout, Ball describes a ter-
ritory hostile to the national government, and in the Conclusion he
characterizes the verdict of the jurors-none of whom were Mormon-as "an act
of defiance toward the federal government" by Arizonans "angry at their pro-
longed colonial status" (p. 218). While such antipathy probably contributed to
the verdict, those familiar with Stephen Cresswell's study of late-nineteenth-cen-
tury federal courts might question Ball's emphasis on this factor. In Mormons and
Cowboys, Moonshiner and Klansmen, Cresswell demonstrates that although U.S. of-
ficials in Arizona Territory often irritated residents and fumbled a few notewor-
thy cases-such as the Wham robbery-they achieved a conviction rate for
federal crimes that ranked extremely high among all states and territories (Uni-
versity of Alabama Press, 1991, chapter 5). Arizona jurors were typically quite
willing to deliver convictions in the U.S. district courts, and Ambush at Bloody Run
would have been strengthened by grappling with this apparent anomaly. Per-
haps other issues-such as racial bias, or the unproven allegations that some ju-
rors were bribed-were more important to the verdict.
This aside, Ambush at Bloody Run is recommended reading. Stories like the
Wham robbery are too often enshrouded in myth and misinformation. Ball not
only tracks down the facts, but uses them to answer larger questions about what
life was like in Arizona's territorial era.
Mesa Communzty College Paul T. Hietter
Blacks zn the American West and Beyond-America, Canada, and Mexico: A Selectively
Annotated Bibliography. By George H. Junne Jr. (Westport: Greenwood Press,
2000. Pp. xvi+686. Acknowledgments, introduction, author index, subject in-
dex. ISBN 0-313-312o8-7. $99-50, cloth.)
Professor George H. Junne Jr. has performed a service for historians and oth-
er scholars interested in the African American experience in the American West.
He has gathered the most comprehensive bibliography to date on this subject.
Others such as Bruce Glasrud (African Americans in the West: A Bzbliography of Sec-
ondary Sources, 1998) have contributed to this endeavor, but Junne's work sur-
passes these earlier efforts in its breadth and its depth of coverage. Junne
defines the West broadly to include all of the continental United States from the
98th meridian west, Alaska, Hawaii, and three more eastern states (Iowa,
Arkansas, and Missouri), as well as Canada and Mexico. He includes thousands
of works, dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, that cover the2002
32 7
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003, periodical, 2003; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101223/m1/379/?rotate=0: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.